Magnificent Mark Making
And then I heard my sock say – Let’s play hide and seek…
Isn’t it annoying how socks seemingly have a life of their own once they enter the washing cycle? There must be a science behind it. Worse, finding an unexpected tissue in the wash. What a mush that is to deal with.
The making of a Laundry basket.
Yesterday’s post was a bit hurried!
I’m trying to work out how to make my ink and collage work together in the landscape. Small images allow me to experiment without the fear of failure. A 6 inch panel seems less daunting – but don’t ask me why.
This is a bridge in Stratford Upon Avon and I am assuming a Mill of some kind on the river Avon. Although as happens these days it has been converted into a trendy eatery. Not sure Shakespeare would have approved.
When comparing the photo with my collage I feel like I want to add some white paint to the windows. Somehow I think it would lift the image. But for now I am happy with the reflections and the roughness that is the roof of the building.
Wednesdays are my office days and there is never enough time in the mornings.
However time to post this simple image of a toadstool!
I was looking for a good quote for todays collage, and although this quote is unknown in origin, it feels perfect for my image!
I’m not sure if this is a smile or a grimace! Certainly a British stereotype with the gap-iness.
Materials used – newspaper, red sugar paper, ink and gouache.
I forgot to plan my year with the unexpected in mind…
It was going to be the 64 Million Artist January Challenge, Watercolour month in July and inktober in October. That was my plan. And today I find myself 6 days late into a local collage daily challenge.
I was meant to be producing some new images for the Woodley and Earley Arts group April exhibition. That was my February. It has to be done so I can get cards and prints produced.
So here we go, what would have been day 1 of a collage challenge. Fish.
This is my clown fish created from an orange leaflet for broadband that came through our door.
Making of video
It happens to us all – Unable to draw or paint to our satisfaction…What do you do?
I’m not afraid to admit I have a pile of failed paintings. Mostly watercolours that I have either given up on or lost the interest in finishing.
I’ve had days when I can’t draw for toffee, or even draw the toffee. Days when it just doesn’t go right – the image in my head is not what is appearing on the paper.
Sometimes going back and looking at these paintings will give me new inspiration. But this is not helpful when you are looking for a way to stop artist block.
So this is my secret! I sometimes tear up my image and collage it into a new image. This can be randomly using bits of the image or finding passages that I like and creating smaller paintings from the original.
Either way gives me a new image and a new direction that can be enough to kill off the artist block!
This video is one of my methods.
Would you be a child again? This post and image is inspired from the Doodlewash prompt – Playground.
When I was young, a very long time ago, playgrounds were really quite boring.
We had tall slides, swings and roundabouts. All painted in lead based paints, peeling from the sun. We had to imagine – fun.
Today’s playground equipment sucks the fun out of imagination! If you want to be an astronaut, there is probably a playground for it. Equipment designed in the shape of a spaceship, a fully enclosed slide to stimulate free falling, add on telescopes and steering wheels.
But where are the kids? Noses stuck in their mobile tablets watching documentaries and number blocks.
Do I sound bitter? More likely jealous!
And always test your ink pen to make sure it waterproof before applying watercolour!
‘Twenty-five yeas that’s longer than I have been alive,’ or words to that effect, become a common theme as you grow older.
I have featured Dawn in a few cartoons in the past few years. A brilliant character. Says what she means. Has a laugh but with an intense serious side.
The cartoon started with a simple thought – Dawn can also talk a lot…She is going to hate me for saying that, but it generated a beautiful idea – long winded speeches and Celebratory champaign being topped up with ice.
I drew out the initial sketch to establish the elements of the cartoon in my A5 sketchbook. There is no point getting into too much detail at this stage.
Confident with the composition, I moved the image onto an A4 sheet, adding some people and details. I was unhappy with the feet being at different heights and wanted to correct this in the final image. So over to the light box to trace off the image and move them back into place!
The final image was then rendered in watercolour starting with the light background washes in blue and yellow. Building up slowly the main elements. Always allowing the watercolour to dry before applying more pigment. The final decision being do I outline in ink or coloured pencil? And of late I have been favouring coloured pencil.
How can you plan for future without looking at the past?
This blog started as a free google blogger site. I posted mainly images from my sketch book as I developed my arty-ness. The images evolved and characters appeared. Below is a painting from a holiday to Cornwall way back in the 90’s.
I like the application of the watercolour in my early paintings. It was done without any lessons or understanding of the watercolour medium.
Today, while the drawings have changed very little, the application of paint has changed.
The 64 Million Artist – January Challenges – remind me to celebrate experimentation. Collage has appeared in my work and gained me an award from the SAA (Society for all artists) in 2022.
I had a lot of success selling cards and paintings in 2022 which has led me to start an Etsy shop and develop this more professional looking website.
This blog will surely grow, and any thing I learn will be passed on and shared on my Facebook, instagram and Youtube socials.
I welcome you to follow the journey!
I spent the month of January creating arty things as part of the 64 Million Artists January challenge prompts. This led me to ask myself lots of questions about my art practice, including can I make art green? Can it be sustainable?
One of my favourite challenges was (re)imagine – taking something and giving it a new purpose. With the above question in mind, I tried to create a watercolour brush from natural materials. We have rabbits so I looked for rabbit hair failed and noticed the hay in the hutch. Would it make a good brush?
I grabbed a bunch of hay without really looking at it and found some twigs in the garden to act as brush handles. Hay is an interesting material as it has rigid and floppy fibres. I decided to make three brushes, 2 rounds and a flat.
The rounds were going to use rigid and floppy fibres to see the difference. I imagined that the more ridged fibre would be more like a pen than a brush. Although I wanted a natural feel to the brush, I did tidy up the stray hay with scissors.
So how did the brushes perform?
I was impressed at the mark making qualities of the hay brushes. The flat brush spread paint easily, but the bristles of hay left interesting marks on the page. The round floppy brush was brilliant for creating tree shapes in the landscape and worked like a normal watercolour brush. The round rigid brush was more pen like and not really suited to watercolour, although I felt that it would work well with thicker paints such as Gouache and Acrylic.
This video shows the complete process for creating watercolour brushes from hay.
